REVIEW: Missouri Quiet – Through the Milleniums [2016]
Artist: Missouri Quiet
Album: Through the Milleniums
Missouri Quiet are one of those bands where nothing about them is quite what it seems based on a first impression. It starts with the album art, before even getting to their name or the name of their break-out full length: looking like a hybrid between a dark industrial album and a straightforward death metal release—they are neither. Then the listener gets to their name: Missouri Quiet. Are they a bluegrass band? Maybe jazz? Again—neither. Finally, their album name implies a spacey, perhaps instrumental progressive metal journey, with the obvious typo giving away the one valid clue about this band—they definitely aren’t from an English-speaking culture. So, what exactly are Missouri Quiet?
Your new favorite technical Deathcore band. Roaring from the frozen tundras of Tyumen, Russia, this crushing quartet sound like an unholy fusion of Dysphoria’s soaring vocal diversity and frantic fretwork crossed with Make Them Suffer’s penchant for symphonic elements and Lorna Shore’s tendencies to coat the listener with gritty, coarse blackening. Intrigued? You should be—because Through the Milleniums is a release both genius and grisly enough to be forgiven for the cringe-inducing typo in its name.
Missouri Quiet are a group of masterful musicians with a goal to obliterate the listener with any weapon in their arsenal. From the sharp, shred-tinted breakdown in “Beginning of the Plague,” through tracks with labyrinthine licks—“Repressed” and “Reu Nu Pert Em Hru pt. III”—to songs that are heavy enough to re-shape the face of the earth—the aptly named “Nuclear Blast”—Missouri Quiet prove they are incredibly talented instrumentalists. Percussionist Sergey Guydarly makes everything possible—fluidly transitioning between BPMs in the triple digits and slamming breakdowns that feel as though they drop to single digit territory. Guydarly’s work on “In a Maze of Time” is dizzying—just as dizzying as the name would imply—just as his speed and technical prowess throughout parts one and three of “Reu Nu Pert Em Hru” dominate the listener’s attention. Guydarly is not just a show off, however; bassist Fedor Yarzev works with him diligently to provide a ruthless low-end that makes every breakdown and slam hit the listener like a shotgun blast to their temple. Yarzev easily keeps pace with Guydarly’s fleet footwork and dreary, devastating heavier bits, adding a firmament of furious, writhing bass for guitarist Evgeniy Golyshev to craft towering bastions of technical perfection atop. Golyshev’s guitar work borrows from Born of Osiris, Dysphoria and more traditional death metal acts to create a smart, skull-splitting fusion between time-honored heaviness and trendy, tremendous brutality. Practically every track sees Golyshev grooving, shredding and chugging—filling every second with skin-blistering intensity, yet without making the release dense and monotonous. Golyshev takes to Guydarly’s simply great drumming like a fish to water—working with practiced expertise atop his challenging percussive soundscape.
You might have guessed, but much like the band’s musicianship, their vocal effort is a far cry from the deception instilled by their unobtrusive name. Frontman Damian Fry is furious, shredding the listener’s ears with a razor sharp assortment of shrill screams and breaking bones with low, bellowed growls. From the first howls of “Repressed,” Fry sets an astounding precedent that serves as an archetype for the amazing vocals that prevail throughout the entire album. While the aforementioned song, as well as stand-out tracks “In a Maze of Time” and “Nuclear Blast” showcase Fry’s work on his lonesome, songs like “Falling Sickness” and “The Funeral Romance Pt. III” see him working with some of heavy music’s biggest names—Dan Watson and Tom Barber, respectively—to instill pure horror into the listener’s head. As brilliant as Through the Milleniums’ guest work is, it’s a pure bonus, as Fry’s stellar range and striking endurance are both more than apt when it comes to doing justice to the album’s varied-yet-vicious soundscape.
With a diverse and dynamic instrumental canvas and a crushing, comprehensive vocal aspect to match, Missouri Quiet run into one small pitfall that bars Through the Milleniums from perfection (or something close). While the band’s symphonic element is one more thing to love about them, there are times where it’s simply overdone. While a thirteen track album is an impressive feat, especially for a debut, three of the tracks are interludes, in addition to an introduction that is primarily sample-and-Chug driven. By the time the listener goes through the album a second or third time, the effect by these bits of reprieve has long worn off, making them skippable sections that do little to add to the long-term worth of the release. This is not to say there isn’t a time and a place for tracks like “Continuum,” or the fourth (and unnecessary) installment of “The Funeral Romance,” but having simply too many of these tracks just seems like a waste of space.
Barring a penchant for ethereality that borders on a fetish, Through the Milleniums is a riveting display of ruthless, technically marvelous aggression. With riffs, shred and scales overlapped a brutalizing battery of breakdowns, Missouri Quiet is more than the name would imply, giving listeners a much more raunchy listen than they’d otherwise predict.
8.5/10
For Fans Of: Dysphoria, Nexilva, Within the Ruins, Lorna Shore
By: Connor Welsh
